Dancing Energy!

 This week we wrapped up the How We Express Ourselves unit with dance performances. Each of the groups did an incredible job of coming up with their own set of moves and dance routine to express themselves. Check them all out below!

A few weeks back, the students completed presentations on different types of traditional cultural dances from around the world. One portion of the presentation was to demonstrate part of one of the dances that they had researched. Here is a compilation video that I put together. 

This week we also began our final inquiry of the year and it’s all about Energy!

In our opening Brainstorming activity, the students demonstrated the ability to make many connections and came up with some good questions to help guide us. 

3D Forms and Dance Forms

 This week we was all about different forms as the students formed groups to explore our third and final line of inquiry of the unit, “ Developing our creativity through expressive movement.” Each group was asked to choose a story, message or emotion that they would express through a dance. They first thought up the types of movements that they would need to use to express their message. Next, they chose a song that matched their theme and types of movements and worked cooperatively with the members of their group to create a dance routine.

Initially there was a bit of conflict between a couple members of some groups, but through some conversations and teacher intervention the students learned to make compromises and became more open-minded towards listening to each other’s opinions. It was great seeing the change in some members who went from trying to leave their group, to hearing them ask other members, “What do you think we should do here?” and hearing groups clap and nod in agreement when someone made good suggestions.

The groups also performed for each other, and we worked on giving not only positive feedback but also critical feedback with suggestions on how they could possibly improve their performances. We also had a chance to do the same for the Grade 4 students. On Monday, the groups will have one final chance to rehearse their dances before their final performances! Please look forward to videos in next week’s blog!

In math, we continued our Geometry unit but have moved up one dimension from 2D shapes to 3D forms. Using clay and toothpicks, the students created 3D skeletons of various pyramids and prisms to help them discover the patterns between the number of sides on the base shape and the number of vertices and edges in the different forms.

In language, we continued our personal narratived with the focus of adding dialogue and tags (said, asked, replied, whispered…) to their stories.

Finally, in PE we continued training for next Friday’s Sports Day! We look forward to seeing you there! Please remember to have your child wear their school shirt! 

Training our Minds and Bodies

This week the students finished up our last few presentations on traditional cultural dances and then we learnt about the elements of dance: Body, Energy, Action, Space and Time. 

Next week for our final project, the students will be applying all that they have learnt as they will be working in small groups to create their own dance that incorporates all of the elements and express themselves creatively to match a theme or tell a story.

As sports day is quickly approaching, we have been practicing various events such as long jump, hurdles and javelin; focusing on proper form and technique. 

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The students have been enjoying the stories and sharing their thoughts and opinions in reading groups.

In math we continued to learn about the attributes of various polygons as well as features such as parallel lines, or right angles. As a challenge we tried to see how many different polygons they could make using 12 toothpicks.